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US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

reuters.com

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Re: US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

#691

Post by pseudocomposer »

dnissley wrote: post #633
spiderice wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least back up your snark with an explanation of how that answers GP’s question.

I thought it was pretty obvious, and don't detect any snark. A business/industry gets subsidies and is able to grow faster than it would have or just simply grow where nothing would before. Those businesses are then subject to taxes which the government collects and puts to use, which then benefits the populace at large.

Businesses that don’t get subsidies pay the same exact taxes. And businesses pay very little tax in the first place. Finally, tax revenue isn’t an ownership stake in a company; no amount of money is.

Re: US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

#692

Post by networkchad »

esoterica wrote: post #598
voakbasda wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, my tiny rural co-op ISP should barred from getting one of these, because they cannot afford to lay dozens of miles of fiber in order to serve a hundred households? You want to keep us country folk in the dark ages? Because that’s what it sounds like. Laying fiber requires a small crew, and they don’t work for free. My driveway alone is over a 1/4 mile (400m), and it will take them a day to lay and terminate my br…

If you choose to live away from civilization then you’ve chosen to forgo the benefits of civilization. It’s ridiculous that we massively subsidize people who made the voluntary decision to live in a way that makes providing infrastructure for them cost prohibitive. It’s a free country and you can live in a cave on top of a mountain if you want, but you shouldn’t get to demand that the government spend millions of dol…

[dead]

Re: US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

#693

Post by sinuhe69 »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #288

I'm glad to see the FCC sticking to its requirements and having a testing regime for them. Starlink's own service specifications are far below the 100/20Mbps requirements. They currently are promising 25-100Mbps down, 5-10Mbps up. In congested areas they often don't even deliver that in the evenings. [1] I use Starlink in my rural area and am grateful for it. But hopefully the $900M will be better spent on other ISPs…

I wonder whether you have any data to back up your claim, but other data seem to contradict it. Also see the comment of Luke Lambert on this thread

https://gist.github.com/LukeLambert/dd722e49bc773bcb27e859d9...

Re: US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

#695

Post by sinuhe69 »

jrflowers wrote: post #476
grecy wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Starlink success, and to that extent, SpaceX, are arguably tied to government money. Citation please. The government are paying SpaceX as a customer, they're not giving them free money. Also note they're paying them a lot less than they pay ULA for the same things

This is a good point. So long as you define “government money” as “something other than money from the government”, SpaceX does not rely on government money. You can see that this is true with other businesses as well, no business relies on getting “customer money” because “customer money” means when customers donate to you in exchange for nothing, not money that they pay in exchange for goods or services.

Of course by government money, the OP meant subsidization and other form of direct money incentives, not paying for fair and square services.

Re: US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

#696

Post by eggy »

mdasen wrote: post #38
I_Am_Nous wrote: post #15

When applying for RDOF you say what service tier you are targeting and instead of shooting for the minimum 25/3, Starlink applied for 100/20. When they didn't reach those speeds[1], they were ineligible but not just because they didn't hit the required speeds on their existing network. There are more details here[2] but the jist is that Starlink bid to supply 100/20 internet to over half a million subscribers and the…

Starlink (and Musk in general) have been over-promising and under-delivering for years now. Starlink claimed 150Mbps back in 2020 and that speeds would double to 300Mbps by the end of 2021.[1] Instead, speeds have halved.[2] At this point, T-Mobile is likely serving more rural high speed internet customers with greater speeds (T-Mobile has 4.2M home internet customers and Ookla's stats show 34% to be rural for 1.4M;…

It's not even 2024, and the targets are for 2025.

How long has T-Mobile been ramping up their program to achieve this 1.4M vs. 1.1M, and how much does the government subsidy ACP cover for this 1.4M in order to have those customers under T-Mobile? And it seems they are being fined $200M for not complying with the subsidy's rules [1].

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tmobile-fine-idUKKBN27K25...

Re: US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

#697

Post by phatskat »

czl wrote: post #630
tempestn wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Musk is smart, but also bipolar and narcissistic, and likely often on stimulants, which makes him regularly do dumb things.

Compared to a same aged person does Musk do more dumb things each day? Perhaps his few dumb things get amplified by his haters? Any normal person that manages to earn themself what Musk has earned might that affect their personality? Maybe make them more narcissistic etc? Large wealth would not affect your psychology? Regarding bipolar: It would not surprise me but is there evidence? Did he admit it?

Of course wealth affects one’s mental state, this is pretty well studied.

Also “earned” is a bit generous, he’s had a lot of “right people, right time, right place” in his life (not to mention a great start from the emerald mines).

Also why look at dumb things per day when what matters (to me) is the enormity of dumb actions? He bought Twitter for way more than it was worth because he had a hissy fit. He’s “concerned” that AI isn’t allowed to say the n-word. He did a live public call with Andrew Tate, Alex Jones, and Vivek Ramaswamy. I could do one simply dumb thing every day for my entire life and not live up to the sheer stupidity of this man’s actions.

Re: US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

#698

Post by phatskat »

medvezhenok wrote: post #492
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched a panel discussion on self driving cars in 2015 with several legit experts in the technology (I believe Sebastian Thrun was one of them). There were also some CEOs. The experts all said there’s no way the tech would deploy before 2025, potentially later. The CEOs were saying 2018 or 2019. The experts had a clear view way back then, the CEOs just don’t want to listen.

Not many people, even experts, predicted the success of ChatGPT even five years ago - and most have moved their timeline for AGI up significantly because of its release. AI is a hard field to make predictions in.

Do you have sources on those predictions moving up “significantly” because of ChatGPT? Predicting words that sound good together, as a result of a prompt, based on a pre trained set of data is vastly different from AGI.

Re: US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

#699

Post by sinuhe69 »

By the way, is the FCC's decision likely to improve rural access in the future or not (without Starlink)? Perhaps not, as the past has demonstrated. But with Starlink they will have better access anyway. So Starlink is a victim of its own success? And the FCC has acted in the best interests of the nation by saving 900 million taxpayer dollars, while rural access will still improve? What an irony!

Re: US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

#700

Post by fastball »

Timon3 wrote: post #681
fastball wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think it needs to be stretched very, very far? I don't think it needs to be stretched at all. The first sentence is literally : > Last year, after Elon Musk acquired Twitter and used it to voice his own political and ideological views without a filter, President Biden gave federal agencies a greenlight to go after him. The Biden admin (and by extension the FCC) is "the feds", and "voicing views without a f…

> Why do you think it needs to be stretched very, very far? I don't think it needs to be stretched at all. The initial sentence "the feds punishing Musk for not participating in their well documented censorship operations" states that Musk isn't participating in censoring other people. The sentence you quoted states that Musk "voices his own political and ideological views without a filter", which doesn't have anythi…

It does not state that. Censoring yourself does count as censoring, and is therefore included in the concept of "censoring operations". You're putting words in the commissioner's mouth when you tack "people" on to it.

That being said, Musk is also refusing to censor other people on Twitter, so your point is moot regardless.

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